Category Archives: Race

Living in Joan Didion’s Culture Shock

What kind of a man picks a fight with a woman old enough to be his mother? Daunte Wright. Just a poor black guy, with an arrest warrant and a previous firearms violation, trying to go about his business. And what kind of a woman apologizes profusely, sobbing uncontrollably, for trying to do her job […]

‘Tiny Grass is Dreaming’

There are no statues of Todd Beamer in Newark, N.J., but there is one of George Floyd. For all of the extensive 20th anniversary coverage of the 9-11 terrorist attacks, this oversight seems to have escaped notice. On Sept. 11, 2001, Beamer, 32, boarded United Airlines Flight 93 in Newark and headed for a business […]

Body Cams: A ‘Neutral Third Eye’

How perfect that the first U.S. police department to study body-worn cameras on officers was in Rialto, Calif., where Rodney King met his Maker. Years before King died in 2012 of a drug overdose at his home in Rialto, he became famous when Los Angeles police officers beat him following a high-speed chase – an […]

America’s New N-Word is ‘Cops’

Hold the reparations. The debt America supposedly owes its black slave descendants will be paid for in kind – by destroying the criminal justice system. All black criminal suspects are hereby freed of all suspicion. You don’t have to pull over for any police officer. You don’t have to answer your door for any police […]

Dollar Signs in Their Eyes

George Floyd didn’t change the world. He made a fool of it. The man who bought a pack of cigarettes with an allegedly counterfeit  $20-bill, then refused to return the cigarettes, ended up leaving an estate worth $27 million. That’s the settlement his family received because Big Floyd didn’t want to give the cigarettes back […]

A New Face on the ‘Creep Sheet’

How do you know you’ve finally arrived after being a member of a marginalized minority? You’re treated like a white guy. Welcome to the privileged world of white power, Rep. Diego Hernandez.  How do you like it? Hernandez (D-East Portland) is facing expulsion from the Oregon House of Representatives after a Conduct Committee recommended he […]

What Could Go Wrong?

It’s hard to get excited over the insurrection in Washington D.C. after a year when rioting became acceptable in the U.S. If it’s OK to go on a rampage in service to Black Lives Matter, why can’t a QAnon freak like Jake Angeli roam the Senate floor showing off his bare chest, painted face and […]

Roughing It in Lake ‘No Negro’

Diego Stolz would have loved to trade places with Mya Gordon, a young black teenager who made a documentary about the racism she encountered in Lake Oswego, Ore. – also known as Lake ‘No Negro.’ That’s the title she gave her documentary, “Lake ‘No Negro.’” It could be a slur in the hands of a […]

Fanfare for Donald Trump

Should Donald Trump live to see Election Day, he deserves another win. It would be a rebuke to America’s vaunted media who have devoted the last four years to waging war on him. This is the same media who are forever telling us that the president of the United States is the most powerful man […]

The Lynching of Jake Gardner

The black man had big plans for his future. The white man was trying to run a bar. The black man boasted he wanted to have 18 kids and make a rap album as great as his idol, Kevin Gates. The white man had a dog named LeBron and campaigned for Donald Trump. This black […]